MartinHafer I like film noir--you know, told old gangster films from the 40s and 50s. This Damon Runyan story has almost all the earmarks of a good film noir movie...most. However, it also involves a cute kid and a schmaltzy storyline--something you'd NEVER find in a true example of noir.When the film begins, two hoods, Cory (Wayne Morris) and Martin (Pat O'Brien) chase down a guy who stole $50,000 from them. In the process of getting it back, they are forced to shoot the guy. Years pass and the two crooks have gone separate ways. Martin has an aura of respectability about him and Cory is still a hood--a hood with a girlfriend who has a kid, Elsie. When someone goes to the police with information about the killing which occurred at the beginning of the film, Cory decides to rat on his old friend and offers to testify against him to save his butt. Not surprisingly, Martin is furious and is out to kill Cory when he finds out he's being betrayed.All this sounds like perfect noir--a killing, betrayal and revenge. However, Elsie soon becomes involved in the case and the dopey kid thinks that Martin is Santa...yes, Santa. She tries to help him-- not only because of this but because her soon to be step-daddy is a sadist who beat her cute little dog. Even Martin isn't cold enough to do that and soon takes the pup under his care. What's next? Well, it ain't exactly kid-friendly and is interesting but the whole subplot involving the kid tended to take away the hard edge from this one--and I WANT a hard-edged story! All in all, not a bad film but also one that isn't exactly the best from the two stars. Without the kid and the dog, the story would have been a lot better.

bkoganbing When I looked up Damon Runyon on Wikipedia before writing this comment, I could find no reference to this story or this film. This has to be the most obscure Damon Runyon story ever put on film.As surely as Mark Twain is accepted as the chronicler of life on the Mississippi, Damon Runyon is his counterpart for life on the most famous street of all, Broadway in New York City. His characters whether he writes seriously or for comedy are a part of New York, they could not exist in any other environment.Johnny One-Eye is one of his serious and more obscure works. Old time gangster Pat O'Brien and Wayne Morris have done their share of bad things, but now have risen to some respectability. But when a hot shot prosecutor starts breathing down Morris's neck, he's ready to feed him O'Brien. That O'Brien won't have and when he confronts Morris, he's forced to shoot and kill one of Morris's gunsills. O'Brien is wounded himself.The wounded gangster is befriended by a little girl and her badly injured dog who has only one good eye. O'Brien has quite an interesting 24 hours before all is resolved.The film it bares the most resemblance to that I've seen is Odd Man Out. O'Brien certainly found a few more friends than James Mason did in his injured state though.Sad to say that this film is a cheaply made independent film with not so great production values. That's made up by the location shooting in New York a la Naked City. Look for a good performance by Dolores Moran as the showgirl mother of the little girl befriending O'Brien.Fans of Damon Runyon might want to give this one a look.

classicsoncall With one of the cooler sounding film titles going, I was surprised when the title character turned out not to be a gangster, but a down and out mutt belonging to a little girl. Johnny One-Eye gets his name from Martin Martin (Pat O'Brien), victim to a former partner's bullet, and holed up in a run down alley where young Elsie White (Gayle Reed) discovers his presence. Martin concocts a story claiming to be Santa Claus, which seems off the wall at the time, but winds up making some sense to set up the picture's finale.It's always interesting to see Pat O'Brien in one of his villainous roles, so diametrically opposed to the haloed characters like Father Jerry from "Angels With Dirty Faces" that one is more accustomed to. Here however, he's outdone by co-star Wayne Morris, who endears himself to the audience by kicking Elsie's dog out of the house. That pretty much establishes that Dane Cory (Morris) deserves whatever he's got coming.With apartments in New York City going well north of a million dollars these days, that Park Avenue penthouse Martin bought for five grand sounded like a pretty good investment.As for Johnny One-Eye, his real name in the story was Skipper, which must have been a popular pet name in the 1950's; my first dog was Skipper too, a fox terrier. The thing that puzzled me though was that after the dog's first appearance in the alley with that lame eye, subsequent scenes showed him with what appeared to be two good ones under all that facial hair. But then Johnny Two-Eyes wouldn't have summoned the proper pathos for a story like this.Yes it does get a bit melodramatic at times, especially when it comes time for the wind up. You might want to have a box of hankies around for the death of Santa Claus scene, maybe two if you have a youngster watching with you.

duke1029 Despite the film's original storyline, director Robert Florey, who was well past his prime when this low-budget programmer was made, does injustice to a very original Damon Runyon's plot idea. An innocent but plucky young girl naively believes that a criminal fugitive (Pat O'Brien) who's hiding out in a deserted building in her neighborhood, is really Santa Claus. She keeps his presence secret and does her best to help him. Florey fills the story with bathos and saccharine sentimentality involving the title character, the girl's little dog, and the film ultimately becomes mired in its own mawkishness.More than a decade later Bryan Forbes would direct a critically-acclaimed film based on a similar premise. In 1961's WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, youngster Hayley Mills mistakenly believes fugitive wife-murderer Alan Bates, who is hiding out from the authorities in the barn on her father's isolated British farm, to be Jesus Christ. The tact and taste with which Forbes handles the material is a paradigm of understatement and restraint. Although Mary Hayley Bell's (mother of Hayley} narrative was lauded at the time for its great originality, the plot premise appears cribbed from this unpretentious Damon Runyon B-film programmer.